


a history of violence

by slybrunette



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:32:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set a few weeks after 6.19 - Sympathy For The Parents. This is the wake up call. this is the alarm bells ringing, the sirens screaming, and there is no turning back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a history of violence

The day he finally hauls off and hits her, it's in the hospital.

It's an accident. It's always an accident. One minute, she's gloating over the surgery she just stole out from underneath Alex, full-on mocking him about how the highlight of his day will most likely be watching her operate from the gallery if he's not too busy doing sutures. The next, she's on her knees on the hard linoleum floor, tasting blood.

Someone's yelling, someone's saying her name, someone's crying – it takes her a moment to realize that the last one is her. It's not something she actively feels, it's just something that's happening, reactionary. All she feels is pain in her lip, a soreness in her jaw, and hands on her shoulders in time with a thud a few feet from her.

The thud is Owen, hitting the floor with far more force than she had, his head turned the other way so that she can't see if he's conscious or not; she finds that she doesn't care so much about which one it is right now. A glance up reveals Alex with his hand still balled into a fist by his side, eyes flashing dark and a nod in her direction that's meant to ask if she's okay.

"Hey," the voice, and the hands, belongs to Lexie and she's turning Cristina's face to look at her, dabbing at what has to be blood on her chin. She looks panicked, throwing glances at Alex, at Owen, settling on Cristina just long enough to stumble through, "I'll page Meredith and…and we'll fix this. Let's just – "

Alex's voice is deadly calm as he says, "He's out."

"Right." Lexie offers her hands, finally wrapping them around Cristina's arms, and Cristina lets herself be pulled up. Her mind, her energy, is elsewhere as she lets Lexie lead her into an exam room two hallways down, away from Owen and Alex and the stunned people who had come to see what the fuss was about.

 

-

 

Lexie spends five minutes fixing what amounts to a split lip, telling her how much worse it could be, talking about bruising, checking to see if her jaw is dislocated (it's not) or if she chipped a tooth (she didn't) like if she stops moving then she might freak out. Or freak out more.

It makes Cristina want to scream. It makes Cristina long for Meredith or Alex or someone who isn't so damn sensitive and sympathetic. She lives in her head for those five minutes, processing, mapping up the moments leading up to his fist connecting with her face.

He'd been turned away from her, the line of his body tense, arms braced on a cart filled with supplies. She'd walked right up to him, without a word, a hand on his shoulder, and she was on the floor before she could register the mix of emotions on his face.

She'd flinched, in the kitchen, weeks ago, a frying pan and the noise that made her ears ring and her blood run cold. It was a sign. A sign that everything wasn't okay but she'd gotten too good at lying to herself and let it go. Let him say he would see Dr. Wyatt and then never schedule the appointment.

She let it go and now she's paying for her mistake.

Meredith bursts through the door, letting it slam behind her, startling Lexie, and her voice is high and loud, "What the hell is going on?"

Lexie stumbles through the first syllable of about ten different words and Cristina locks eyes with her best friend from across the room. She doesn't look away, makes no attempt to hide the swelling of her lip.

"Did he do this to you?" Meredith's looking at her like she already knows the answer, like she's just preparing to build steam. Cristina knows exactly what she would do to Derek if the situation were reversed and, by the intensity in Meredith's eyes, she can tell the same plans are being made by the other woman. "I'm going to fucking kill him."

"Get in line," Cristina remarks, the first thing she's said since she got in here, and she's just now noticing the way her tongue stings. She must've bit it, pretty hard too.

Meredith shoots a questioning look in her sister's direction, which is met with a nervous wringing of her hands and, "Alex knocked him out cold. It was kind of…amazing really." And the whole hero worship thing that's adding to whatever thing Lexie already has for Alex is just really not working for her right now. Lexie can deem it heroics but Cristina knows what it is. It's instinct. It's a guy who watched his mother get beat up on a regular basis until he finally took his father out. It's an ex-wrestler who still remembers how to throw a punch, how to channel his anger, residual or not.

It was helpful and she might even thank him for it one of these days, but it certainly wasn't heroic.

"I don't know where he is," Lexie finally adds. Meredith stares and she picks up the hint after a few seconds. "But I can go find out."

Meredith waits until the door is closed before she says anything else. It's the same reason Cristina's been relatively quiet. She's only going to talk about this with Meredith. She's not going to have people ask her if she's okay every time they see her and they're not going to ask her about her feelings or what she's going to do. She's going to have this conversation once and then it's going to be done with.

"You have to leave him."

And it's out there. No beating around the bush. No more 'it was just the one time' or 'it'll get better eventually'. It was not just one time and it isn't getting better. It's getting worse. And no guy is worth getting socked in the face for.

She is Cristina Yang and she has always prided herself on putting herself and her career first, above relationships, above just about anything else. She is no one's punching bag – literally or metaphorically.

"You have to leave him," Meredith repeats, more emphatically, eyes almost pleading with her.

Cristina swallows. Remembers hands around her throat. Breathes deep. "I know."

"This can't happen again. I don't care what he says or what Dr. Wyatt says. This is over." She steps closer, puts a hand along Cristina's cheek, tilts her head so that she can see the damage better. It's minimal, considering. It could be worse. Lexie's repetition of that statement had been annoying but it was also true. Next time could be worse, and that's why there could be no more next time.

They say you're supposed to stay with people through these things. Go through the hard times together. She doesn't have it in her to stick around, and she doesn't know if that makes her stronger or weaker for it.

"Cristina?"

"Meredith, I knew that the minute I hit the floor, okay. I'm not the battered woman who makes excuses." She sighs, braces her hands against the edge of the table underneath her. "I'm done and there's nothing he can say to change my mind."

"Okay." Her hand hasn't left her cheek and her free hand is one the table, next to Cristina's, and she knows Meredith's itching to hug her, holding back because she knows that this is Cristina and they are not those people. "Okay. You should go home. Or you can stay with me tonight."

She shakes her head. "I'm not going home. I have a job to do. I didn't steal a surgery out from under Alex for nothing." Cristina can feel the life returning to her voice, can feel the pain subsiding from whatever Lexie gave her. "Derek's going to send him home anyways. He's a liability. If he did that to me, he could do the same to a patient."

"Right. Of course he will." Meredith breathes deep, finally drops her hand from Cristina's face, letting it mirror the position of her other hand. "Can I do anything for you?"

It's an easy decision. "No. I want to go check on my patient and do this surgery."

"But you'll come stay with me tonight? Just to make sure he doesn't come try to beg his way back tonight."

"If you've got the tequila – "

Meredith laughs, lighthearted or close enough to it. "Do I ever." Her eyes turn serious again, even when her lips are still stretched into a smile. "I'm here if you want to talk. Just page me."

Cristina doesn't answer. She doesn't need to. Instead, she steps down from the exam table, catching a quick glimpse of her reflection to make sure she looks okay. She does. Her eyes aren't red-rimmed, the lip is swollen but the bleeding has stopped, and aside from being a little disheveled she's fine. She can do this.

She can be this person. The person who functioned perfectly fine on her own, who treated relationships as something that was fun at the time and nothing more, who immersed herself in her job.

She can leave him and move on.

There is no other option.

When she walks out the door she puts on an air of confidence, feels resolve build with each step, and Meredith's eyes burn into her back but she says nothing.

Tonight there will be discussion, brought on by too much tequila and generally centered around the theme of 'men suck', even with Meredith's post-it husband waiting for her upstairs and Alex finding his way home from the bar late. Tomorrow she'll dump Owen, kick him out the apartment, ignore all the pleas and apologies he throws her way with the kind of mental fortitude that she hasn't been able to muster around him in too long.

Today, there is this. There is surgery and labs and her hands this close to a human heart. Everything else will have to wait.

(It's the freest she's felt in years).


End file.
